Misery

Loss: $13

Anyone who has read my blog for any amount of time (and all the power to you, I admire your 'grinding' in terms of reading this) will have come accustomed to my inability to take shots at higher levels. Well, today I'm going to try and bring some reasons to the table why.

Well, actually, there's only one reason but it's impossible to avoid it: every time I take any kind of shot I get completely and utterly crushed.

My records since the start of the year look like this.

In 10NL I've won about $194 at about 3.3 bb/100 (which is actually off my pace of last year by quite a distance - and it does include some ropey FTP 10nl tables that I quickly sacked off anyway). None the less I've been making money. And that's from about 30k hands.

At 20NL and 25NL on Full Tilt poker and ipoker this year I've made a loss of $56 in just 2k of hands running at -6.57 bb/100. Terrible right? Well of course. Let's find out why. Let's look at the big pots I've lost at these stakes.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2688124

This was a difficult hand which I played poorly but got nailed by just the right river card to rob me of half a stack. The overshove by him led me to believe he had a Q with a good kicker.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2688133

I think this hand developed from me being a little frustrated from getting no good cards or action for a while and getting pissed off with people raising me all the time.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2688146

I think I talked about this hand a couple of days back. The move came from maniacal player who just happened to complete his hand when I completed my hand.

So in those three spots I definitely got my money in bad. And I should be down because of them . But now we have two hands that define my real pain and suffering.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2688153

It took a very long time to recover from that hand.

And now this today. I had previously made two loose calls with this player drawing to a straight and nailed it on the end so I thought this hand would be the perfect opportunity to completely rinse him with over-aggression.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2688160

It's a very simple hand with a very simple result. But it's yet another crucial hand where I've been cained. From this hand I would feel comfortable carrying on with these stakes and (maybe) start to make more progress. But nope, I've been blasted down again. This is probably the biggest pot I have ever lost and I'm gutted.

This incident happened today by the way and I carried on because I was sure I wasn't tilted. And sure enough, in a 10nl game I made an all in call with AK on a A22 board and the villain hand AJ. So I was then just $10 down for the session. Then I had KK. I raised. One shove, then another shove. It's hard to fold in those circumstances (about a week ago I made the call and won a $40 pot) and I didn't fold. One guy tabled 77, the other AA. They both went on to make sets. Cheers.

I still carried on and ended up playing this hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2688180

I honestly thought I'd hit my straight on the river and was annoyed when he didn't call. Then I looked back at the hand and realised how inadvertently lucky/skillful the play was. I quit right after that hand ending the session down $13 - and that included the AA and KK hand.

Maybe I should be pleased that I'm only a buyin and a bit down after some really high variance hands/plays etc. But I don't feel as though I've played well and the poker gods have conspired against me at those, what I could dub, career critical hands.

I've got to be honestly with you. I'm struggle to tolerate both my attitude and the game itself right now.